Focus

Complete the interactive activities in the Seneca app to work towards your CPD certificate.

Focus and the Prefrontal Cortex

The prefrontal cortex makes up 28% of the brain and is involved in processing our thoughts, controlling what we think about, and our attention. This fosters the idea that we have control over what we pay attention to.

Switching focus

While reading this course, if someone asked you to listen carefully to see if you could hear a bird outside the window, you would instantly switch your attention to search for that sound.
You would no longer be focussed on what you were reading on this page, your PFC would not be processing information from this course alone, and the learning process would be impeded.

Executive function

The executive function is the ability to choose and filter sensory inputs.
- Research has shown that the executive function is not as well developed in children as it is in adults.

Changing focus

When children were presented with cards and asked to sort them by colour, they completed the task easily.
When they were presented with the same cards but were asked to sort by shape, they found the process much more difficult, because they had to switch their attention from colour to shape.
- This demonstrates the importance of attention, and the ability to switch attention, in the learning process.

Sorting Information

How the PFC sorts information

When you are fully attending to the information you are receiving, your prefrontal cortex allows you to categorise, sort and store incoming information and make links with pre-existing information.
- The PFC is making decisions about the information being received based on what is already known.

Information in the classroom

Within the classroom, students are receiving information through two main channels: sight through the occipital cortex and sound through the Heschl’s gyrus.
- Both are constantly sending information to the cerebral cortex and prefrontal x about the world around us.

Learning visually

The occipital cortex sends information via two routes: a dorsal path for spatial processing, and a ventral path for processing the object.
- This affects how we consider what we say while we deliver content and the way we interpret text and how it is presented spatially.

The prefrontal cortex and memory

When the prefrontal cortex is damaged, patients have not lost the ability to store memories, but they do lose the ability to use them.

The brain's conductor

Shimamura says it is useful to think of the prefrontal cortex as the conductor of an orchestra, dictating the pace and tempo of thought, calling on different parts of the brain at varying times to recall specific memories.
It plays an important role in metacognitive processes, as through the process of recall we can test the strength of our understanding of specific topics.